On every possible issue confronting the American people in this year of 2009 and beyond, the new president of the United States has made one thing clear: He intends to make his mark on all of them.

In his first address to a joint session of Congress on Feb. 24, Barack Obama demonstrated again the idealism and the belief in hoping for the best, then actually trying to make change happen that got him so easily elected.

Clooney, an actor, is a Darfur activist and that region of Sudan was the purpose of his meeting with President Obama. Darfur is one of several of Africa’s on-going horror stories. The region is in southwest Sudan and there’s been a civil war in progress since 2003.

This week the Bedford Museum and Genealogical Library is proud to honor Carol M. Swain Ph.D.

Carol was raised in Bedford County in a shanty without running water and electricity in only two rooms. She had 11 brothers and sisters and a father that was not always there. Her mother Dorothy Henderson, “Mama Dot” had infantile paralysis as a child which made one side of the body smaller than the other and she was crippled for life.

With very little to show for his sincere efforts at bipartisanship, President Barack Obama nonetheless signed his landmark economic stimulus bill into law, thanks to the votes of Democrats and just three common sense Republicans in the Senate.

When one speaks of Republicans and uses the phrase “common sense,” what is being said is a word most conservatives disdain: moderate. Those dipped deeply into the fires of right-wing orthodoxy have no compass for the center. Nor do they want one.

I had the opportunity to attend a conference on Charles Darwin last week held Feb. 15 through 17. It was scheduled to mark the 200th anniversary of his birth and the 150th anniversary of the publication of his Origin of the Species. Charlie’s birthday is on Feb. 12.

This conference, by the way was not a Darwin Day celebration. It was sponsored by Answers in Genesis, a creationist organization that believes Darwin got it wrong and can offer data to demonstrate what’s wrong with Darwin’s theory.